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When Caleb Chao started working on Nomura Holdings Inc's
mortgage-bond desk after graduating from college, he got an education very
different from the one offered at Cornell University.
Testifying at the trial of three former Nomura traders, Mr
Chao said on Monday he was soon taught how to mislead customers about prices
and other details in order to get larger commissions.
"The purpose was to sort of make a client feel like we
were working for them, but in reality we were making more money," Mr Chao
told jurors in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut. "I just graduated
from college and I had no other prior experience. I was relying on how my
bosses told me how the market operated."
Mr Chao, who worked for Nomura from 2010 to 2014, is the
second former trader at the Japanese firm to take the stand for prosecutors in
the trial of three ex-colleagues accused of lying to their clients.
Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins and Tyler Peters deny
wrongdoing, saying their …

One of Hong Kong's most high-profile targets of activist
short sellers has hatched an unorthodox plan to fight back.
It's called the "anti-malicious short selling alliance.''
The idea is for companies to band together when bearish traders pounce, sharing
crisis-management advice and in some cases even offering equity investments.
Fullshare Holdings Ltd, the property company that unveiled the plan on Monday,
has faced allegations from two short sellers in the last month.
The proposal highlights how ubiquitous short sellers have
become in Hong Kong. Bearish research firms tracked by Activist Insight have
started 18 campaigns in the city during the past 12 months, the most since at
least 2012.
Short sellers including Muddy Waters and Glaucus Research
dismissed Fullshare's idea, saying it would be bad for shareholders.
"The best idea is to have open and transparent
reporting, which the accounts are supposed to reflect," said Andrew
Sullivan, a managing …

More Singapore companies consider moving to Hong Kong bourse
The competition between the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the
stock exchange of Hong Kong for listings looks set to intensify as more
companies here mull over moves to head to the Republic's rival to raise
capital.
Market watchers said this reveals that a growing number of
companies are hoping to deepen their business presence in the Greater China
market, but these moves are not a guaranteed success.
As Osim prepares its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong
Kong as V3 Group, news emerged earlier this month that Pan-United Corp is
spinning off its Chinese port division for a Hong Kong listing, while LHN said
it is eyeing a dual primary listing there.
Both SGX-listed, Pan-United is Singapore's largest
ready-mixed concrete and cement supplier, and LHN is a real estate management
firm.
The number of Singapore companies exploring a Hong Kong IPO
has "doubled", according to PwC.
21 Number of newly
listed com…

Shares in Noble Group continued their free fall on Thursday,
as analysts hurriedly slashed their target price for the stock following the
firm's shock loss for the first quarter.
Its bonds followed a similar trajectory, tumbling on fears
that the commodity trader might have problems meeting its debt obligations.
The company's shares crashed another 24 per cent, or 21
cents, to 66.5 Singapore cents on Friday, reaching a new 15-year low just a day
after a record 32 per cent plunge.
Its 6.75 per cent bonds due 2020 fell to trade at about 54
cents on the dollar for a yield of 34 per cent; they had started the week at
more than 95 cents.
Noble had announced after the market close on Thursday a
loss of US$129.3 million despite a rise in revenue, and attributed this to a
dislocation in coal markets and higher oil prices.
Its founder Richard Elman told shareholders to expect a
"long, hard slog" to profitability, which the company will most
likely regain in the 2018/2019 fin…

Catalist-listed Alliance Mineral Assets Limited (AMA) has
secured an offtake agreement with Burwill Holdings Limited to supply the
Chinese steel trading and mining firm with lithium concentrate for an initial
five-year period.
This marks a major milestone for AMA as it looks to start
lithium production at its Bald Hill project in Western Australia by the end of
this year. With this, the project has turned from being merely "a
story" to reality, said its CEO Tjandra Pramoko in a phone interview with
The Business Times.
Under the agreement signed with BCL, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Burwill, AMA will sell all of its production between March 15
next year and Dec 31, 2019 at a fixed price of US$880 a tonne for lithium oxide
with a concentration of 6 per cent, according to an announcement by AMA's
mining partner Tawana Resources on Wednesday.
Burwill will provide prepayment of A$25 million (S$26
million), to be split equally between both AMA and Tawana. Of this, the first
…

Magnus Energy Group sank deeper into the red in the fiscal
third quarter ended March 31, with a net loss of S$1.01 million compared to a
loss of S$544,000 a year ago.
This came mainly on the back of weaker revenue, loss from
share of results of joint ventures, and higher other operating expenses.
The group's revenue tanked 38.7 per cent to S$3.3 million in
the quarter and gross profit margin fell from 20 per cent a year ago to 14.5
per cent due to lower profit margin recorded from the wastewater segment.
Magnus's oilfield equipment supplies and services segment,
Mid-Continent Equipment Group Pte Ltd, and the latter's subsidiaries (Midcon
Group) currently form the group's main core business.
The overall performance of the Mid-Con Group remains weak,
posing a drag on the group, Magnus said in its financial statement released on
Monday.
The group has extended a redeemable convertible loan in its
investment in PT Hanjungin, with a view to converting the loan into equity i…

A former Nomura Holdings Inc bond trader said he was trained
to lie to customers shortly after coming to the company in order to boost the
firm's commissions.
Frank DiNucci Jr said the tactics he learned included lying
about where Nomura had bought or sold bonds and misrepresenting the price it
had paid.
DiNucci was the first witness Monday at the trial of three
former Nomura colleagues, Ross Shapiro, Michael Gramins and Tyler Peters, who
are accused of lying to customers about the prices of mortgage-backed
securities. DiNucci told jurors in a federal courtroom in Connecticut that he
learned most of the deceptive practices from Shapiro and Gramins.
DiNucci said he understood that lying and deception was
wrong but didn't "put two and two together" when employing the
questionable tactics.
"It was just commonplace on the desk," he said.
"I didn't think about the reality of it when I was actually doing
it." DiNucci, who worked at Nomura from 2009…